The Demon Lily Journals, Part One, Section One
by Eilwynn
Summary: A fem Ichigo is profiled in twelve short journal-style personal essays. Author updates so frequently that stats are not always indicative. Pre-canon manga-based character study. Sequel to come.
1. The Demon Lily

Author's Note: I know this is a lot of drama for my faithful readers. For all those who are new, welcome. I have been having some problems with anxiety and depression because of past trauma and have been behaving erratically because of that. I apologize for that. It's all part of the problem, I'm afraid. I have taken a break, relaxed and calmed down, done some therapeutic trauma writing, and I feel much stabler. I can't promise to always be steady but I will try to keep my head with this one.

Of course, typical Eilwynn, I started again with an experiment. I realize the format of this story is unusual. Give it a chance. If you like it, great. If you don't, that's fine and you don't need to tell me the format is a little strange. Basically, the first part of this series is a character study in a "series of personal essays" format. So treat it like it is. The second part of this series will be fem Ichigo's canon life told through long, essay-like entries in a journal.

With that said, let's begin. What happens when you take too many university level classes in personal nonfiction and creative writing, read over thirteen dense texts and watch countless movies and read countless articles all concerning Japanese culture, have a series of Japanese penpals, and put so much thought into what a fem Ichigo would be like that she becomes her own original character for you?

You get this fucking fic. Good God, I need a life.

Full Summary:

Part One: A female Kurosaki Ichigo writes a series of essays detailing her time before becoming a Shinigami. A character study. (This book is the first part of that section. A sequel to this book is to come detailing the second part of that section.)

Part Two: A female Kurosaki Ichigo keeps a series of long, extensive, real-time journal entries detailing her time as a Shinigami.

The fem Ichigo story done a little differently. Major focus on pre-canon before manga-based canon is gotten to. ByaIchi, IchiHitsu love triangle eventually to come.

Warning: Author can update so often that stats are not always indicative.

* * *

My name is Kurosaki Oniyuri. That's the Japanese way, with the surname first. The Western way is Oniyuri Kurosaki. Literally translated into English from Japanese, it means "Tiger Lily Black Blade," which is pretty cool if I do say so myself. "Oniyuri" is "Tiger Lily." It comes from the roots "Demon" (Oni) and "Lily" (yuri). Literally, "The Demon Lily."

More amusingly, "yuri" can also mean "lesbian sex," so my name could also mean "Demonic Lesbian Sex," something that I personally find hilarious and that I am often teased about by my friends. My father might have done it on purpose. It sounds like a weird thing to do, but my father has a bizarre sense of humor. Still, I prefer "Demon Lily." Hence, these will be "The Demon Lily Journals."

I was named after a tiger lily because my parents were determined to name all of their daughters after fruits and blossoms. I was born with a full head of unique, wavy, biologically inborn orange hair, a turn on the more traditional Japanese wavy reddish-brown. To name me after an orange blossom of some kind just seemed obvious, and a tiger lily seemed fierce and majestic enough to fit the bill.

Some things about me. I am a teenage girl born and raised in twenty-first century Tokyo, Japan. I am a big sister to two little twin sisters. I am the daughter to a homemaker mother who passed away when I was nine and a father who is a doctor and a mortician, or as we call them in Japan, a _nokansha_. My father runs a small hospital in which he can do everything except major surgery, all the way through to hospice care, which is taking care of a dying person and prolonging their lifespan. Then, when the patient dies, he has a second part of the hospital where he is a _nokansha_.

Morticians in Japan have to slowly, respectfully, silently, and ritualistically prepare a body for burial in front of their collected family and closest friends. They do it from underneath a blanket, never showing the full body but only preparing it in parts from underneath the cloth. _Nokansha_ do things like undress the person and put them in a white robe, clean the person with damp cloths, and put pieces of cotton in each orifice of the person's body. They do the person's makeup, lay their hands just so. It is a very silent, holy, and painstaking process, though sometimes treated with disgust by parts of the population, as dealing with dead bodies is considered by some to be fundamentally unclean.

I am also a good friend to many people of all kinds and all walks of life in my high school in Japan. I rescue cats from shelters and from lives as strays, and I love cutesy cat pendants and keychains. I can see ghosts, in the Japanese Buddhist manner. I am a Japanese feminist who speaks in a lower voice with more masculine wordage and who wants a career, in computer science and engineering. I read and write poetry from various cultures and languages. I love Japanese punk rock music and horror movies. I was a part-time nurse, hospice worker, and mortician for my father growing up; I also took over around the home from my mother after she passed away.

I love spicy Japanese food and chocolate - especially chocolate _mochi_ , a kind of glutinous pasty little rice cake, very cute and sometimes very messy. I chew on mints a lot in my spare time instead of gum. I have taken several classes in Japanese tea ceremony, so I also love green tea.

I read _manga_ (Japanese comics) and I have a black belt in karate. I blend and fuse avant-garde grunge fashion and traditional Japanese fashion to form my own distinct look; I love flame red lipstick and I always have some in my bag or my purse.

I am just doing a quick overview right now, because all of these topics will be explored in detail in future essays, along with a few other topics on top of that. Don't worry - you'll get the entire lowdown. So how will the first part of this journal, this series of essays showing my life as it has been so far, be constructed?

To show you what my past and present look like, before I get into part two (regular long current-time journal entries on important subjects), I will separate this series of essays about what shaped my younger life into two sections. Each section will consist of eleven essays.

The first section will be about my loves and interests, and my big life roles and childhood environment. The second section will chronologically cover the events that personally shaped my life. So: interests and life roles and environment first, mostly things about me personally and my fashion sense to give you a good indicator of what I am like, then the events that have actually happened to me.

There will be an especial emphasis on how Japanese culture has influenced my life, as I feel that is a unique thing I have to bring to the table.

So without further ado, next essay we'll dive right into part one, section one - things about and important to me personally at fifteen years old.


	2. Part 1, Section 1, Like My Mother

Part One

Section One

"Like My Mother"

In Japan, women were expected to be a few things.

They were supposed to be young and thin. Perpetually young and thin. And they were supposed to be cheerful. They used hesitant, polite pronouns and spoke in high, girlish voices. They were healers, physically weak as fighters, they read women's TV and women's magazines full of fashion and fortune-telling, and in the end when they got married, when they were supposed to, they quit their careers and became housewives and mothers.

Always mothers. A mother was the most important thing any woman could be, right after being a girlfriend and a wife. This ideology was enshrined just as much as the idea that an eldest son followed in a successful father's footsteps.

So naturally, I was a problem. I thought of myself as the Japanese problem.

I did want kids, but that was where the similarities to this ideal ended. I didn't want to become a housewife and devote myself solely to motherhood, the way every woman was supposed to. Free not to follow in my father's footsteps as a woman and wanting especially to do the thing everyone told me a woman couldn't, I wanted a future career in computer science and engineering. I had a black belt in karate, so I was a strong fighter - I almost always had been. I disliked traditional feminine TV and magazines, nursing an especial hatred for fortune-telling. I refused to diet and I refused to fear aging. Oddly, this actually helped me to look healthier. I didn't even talk the way a girl was supposed to. I didn't use the hesitant, polite words or the high, soft, breathy, feminine voice.

I spoke like a guy.

The weirdest part, I guess, about Japanese feminism was that everyone said the fight was over and there was no need for it. People called the modern era _"onna no jidai,"_ or "the era of women." Japanese women, it was said, went to college, had equal rights to men, and were capable of having careers in a highly developed country. What more could we want?

Only it wasn't that simple.

Women did go to college, but they usually were funnelled into much smaller and less competitive junior colleges that wouldn't look as good on a resume. Some women waited until they found a man during college, then quit to have children and become a housewife. Other women became "OLs" or "Office Ladies," a contemptuous term for women in an office who sat around getting men coffee and tea and doing secretary work. They, too, waited until they found someone to marry and then usually quit work at least for a while to have kids.

Why the always quitting? Because the law made that easiest.

Daycare was vastly insufficient in Japan and while law did require allowed leave of one year for new parents, it did not require _paid_ leave. So someone always remained working, and guess who that always was?

There were other caveats to being married. Women usually did all the housework, even if they had a job alongside their husband. While women handled day to day household affairs, men still held more say in important household decisions. There was also the phenomenon known as "single transfer," wherein a corporate man transferred somewhere else alone for work and sent money back at home where the mother kept the house and raised the children.

So what if a woman waited until her kids were in school? Well that had its own problems, because most Japanese didn't employ anyone except for low-level, part-time work past a certain age. This was the majority of employed Japanese women.

Motherhood was adored in Japanese culture. It was revered. Child adoption was not more common in Japan specifically because the new parents needed the biological mother's written consent in order for the child to be adopted. Not the father's - just the mother's. Most Japanese saw this as normal, but it must be emphasized that this was actually not a requirement in most other countries. The mother was touted as the most important figure in the Japanese child's life, mostly because she was the parent that was always around and also because Japanese culture needed to believe that in order for Japanese society to continue to function the way it did. Many Japanese women became housewives, not even helping their husband with his own work - but were equally infamous for joining countless groups in their community, feeling empty and anxious for other things to do.

In fact, when a man retired, the woman immediately and usually revealed herself to be the more well-adjusted one. She was the one who knew how to keep the house and be active with the world around her. All the man usually knew was the truly phenomenal Japanese work ethic that had controlled his entire life.

This was the secret behind the ideal. I know this because from an early age my mother taught me - _she_ was the dissatisfied housewife who joined countless community groups because she wanted more. Taking up politics late in life, she taught me the intricacies of feminism, sometimes through her words and sometimes through her own example of secret unhappiness. Even after she died, I took over housekeeping duties at nine years old because my father's daughter was expected to learn household duties before he was. We were not an isolated case, the Kurosaki family. But my mother was my example, and she was so influential that I will be talking about her in more detail in at least one other essay.

So I kept up my rebelling and my learning even into my teenage years - joining karate club and keeping up my black belt, hanging out with my friends, keeping up my excellent grades and my plans for university and computer engineering, and more than anything reading feminist literature - because I remembered how unhappy my mother was when she thought no boys were looking and she thought my toddler sisters weren't paying attention. My mother was intelligent, tough, humorous, and forward. She was a fighter in spirit just as much as I was. And she was out doing new activities and taking up new political causes every single afternoon, almost manic in her constant facade of energy and cheerfulness.

Because she felt trapped.

I was determined not to end up like her, so when she died, I started buying feminist books and I never stopped. When my father put up a show of protesting, I reminded him of how much I was doing around the house now on top of school, and he always conceded. As he was usually at work during the day, I tried to impart my own lessons in private to my little sisters. They were raised in an environment of intellectual and spiritual rebellion.

"My daughters," my father would say, shrugging, "you can't do anything with them. Never could." And he would just smile. It didn't bother him. In a way, he was even proud. He just couldn't relate to it.

So, easy-going despite his inherent eccentric and dryly humorous strangeness, he just let us keep growing.

This was my women's studies minor, because in most Japanese universities if a women's studies minor was available at all, it was small, not funded, not paid attention to, and taught by men. Why was this a problem? Well, first and foremost because according to statistics and polls native to the country, Japanese men were a _lot_ more likely to say there was no more woman problem than Japanese women.

Women did not have equal rights in all cases, either. For example, there were weird laws surrounding naming. A Japanese woman who took on her husband's surname sometimes could no longer care for her father's estate properly. But Japanese women always took on their husband's surname. So what about in my father's case, where all he had were girls? He said it didn't matter, that he just loved his daughters, but I knew him well enough to know that privately the erasure of his family socially bothered him.

Gay rights was obviously a problem, one the Japanese were more aware of than most people seemed to think. One of the strangest parts was that homosocial undertones were almost applauded in Japanese literature and television of all kinds. But they were seen as disgusting the moment they became physical and homosexual.

The Japanese did not allow themselves to be very free and open with physical affection or even verbal affection, and this leaked over into marriages. This was mostly where phenomenons like love hotels and host and hostess clubs sprang up from. Love hotels were places specifically sanctioned as okay to have sex in, the way Japanese couples often did not feel inside their own compact, close-together homes. Host and hostess clubs were places where people specifically went to feel beautiful and young - rare modern Japanese commodities - and to feel the kind of affection and romantic seducing they often didn't get at home. Host and hostess clubs were dreamscapes where reality was lifted for a while, where people who were sometimes married paid a host or hostess to pretend like they were attracted to and in love with them. This was to say nothing of the pornography problem, or of the fact that some weird legal loopholes made some kinds of prostitution _technically_ legal in Japan. It was also to say nothing of the fact that racism did exist in Japan and women of other races were more likely to be prostitutes. And despite all popular perceptions, the Japanese had problems with things like alcohol abuse and domestic violence at least as much as any country did.

But what terrified me most was the information on what a woman's prospects were in Japan if she chose the full-on career path - married or unmarried, children or no children. Did I know how I was going to juggle a career, marriage, and a family in early twenty-first century Japan? No. But increasing numbers of women were doing it, so that wasn't actually my biggest problem.

It was an uphill battle for a woman to get in any major position of power in Japan - even as a career-woman who put off marriage or never got married, which was making up an increasing percentage of Japanese women. Women occupied very few political or managerial positions, were less likely to be considered for major promotions, were seen as more likely to leave work for the home, and if a meeting was called full of both men and women of equal working rank, the women were still always the ones expected to pour the tea. The more traditionally "masculine" her job was, the more likely these kinds of attitudes were. There were even derogatory Japanese terms, now seen generally as not for common use, for women who were "too much like men."

And if I am being honest with myself, now today with all the studying of my own society I have done, I am one of those women. I wear feminine clothing and makeup, I do work around the house, I am a nurse for my father's hospital, but I am still one of those women. I allowed myself that complexity because I realized at some point that nobody else was going to allow it for me.

I don't know how my future is going to go. I know I will continue being a fighter, make it to a major university, try to balance both a computer engineering career and getting married, and work from there. But I don't know. I don't know if I will be able to have both children and a career. I don't know if I will ever find a man who is willing to help me with work around the house. I don't know if I will ever get a career chance for major promotion.

I just don't know.

But I do know I do not want to end up like my mother. And in an increasingly individualistic and economically difficult society - moreover, in a society in which that difficulty is caused mostly by corruption in authoritative institutions such as the government and the corporate system - many other Japanese appear to be saying the same thing.


	3. Taking Back the Power

"Taking Back the Power"

I loved music. Partly because in music in Japan, it must be understood, women took the power back.

Female musical artists could be sexual onstage the way they couldn't in almost any other arena. More than that, they could tease. They could be "look, but don't touch." This applied to amateur female musicians and professional female musicians alike. In the modern era, it was becoming increasingly obvious that women in music were becoming more independent and going off in their own directions. So I particularly loved Japanese female musical artists.

In Japan, pop music - and especially female pop music - started off as very "produced." What I mean is that women were discovered, not only to be talented but to be beautiful. They were then put together in huge numbers, each under a moniker or a specific number, in what are known as "idol groups." This huge group of beautiful girls - idols can also be boys, think cute boy band, but it is girls I am focusing on in this essay - sang songs written for them by men in a highly "produced" and stylized format.

There are still some female musicians like this. Their idol songs are full of cutesy words or sexual and rape innuendos written by men, for example. (Male idol singers are usually either braggadocious or romantically pleading in songs for an invisible female listener.) Or they're an enka singer - enka being a kind of lamenting, folksy ballad, often used with readily manufactured real tears, almost the Japanese version of country and western - and their songs about lost love and heartbreak are written by others, again usually men.

For a long time, this was all female musicians were allowed to be. I found this to be fundamentally uninteresting. The people who I was fascinated by were the female musicians who started breaking the rules.

More recently, Japanese female musicians have started to become adventuresome and daring, to come into their own, and this is what I have always loved. Whether it was Yuki of the Judy and Mary Band claiming to be a tomboy and saying women were actually stronger than men in interviews, Imai Miki becoming famous with inventive jazzy New Wave music and an unexpected camera-shyness, or Konda Nana forging her own path in her career, I loved female musicians who dared to be different in a world of pop standard. Many modern female Japanese musicians had even stopped leaving their careers after having children, a trend I also looked up to with hope.

English is a surprisingly common usage in Japanese pop music. English is useful because it liberates Japanese musicians from some of the strictures of their own language. It is especially useful to Japanese women, who in their own native language either have to talk like men or talk like women. In English, there are no such restrictions. Therefore, the inclusion of English in Japanese music is not a sign of Western idealization - many Japanese artists sometimes have a rather serious problem with certain Western trends, and are their own independent artists - but rather is in many cases more simply a feminist liberation.

In karaoke, if you knew the words, songs including English were always fun to sing just because you could say things you couldn't say in Japanese. And karaoke was much more common in Japan, in part because Japan has always been a collectivistic culture. It is more important in Japanese karaoke for everyone to be sort of good and get along and have fun. It is not like it is in the West, where you're either very good and you do it all the time or you're terrible and you refuse ever to do it.

There were other woman musicians I admired. Matsuda Seiko transformed herself from an idol teenager to a seriously respected musician in part by trying to make it with foreign audiences, including America, a starkly bold move for a Japanese artist. Yuming wrote her own surprisingly bold and emotionally honest music.

But Shonen Knife was one of my biggest heroes.

An all-girl Japanese punk band who became quite famous, Shonen Knife not only wrote songs in liberating English, but they wrote their own music and on incredibly innovative subjects. Many of their songs were unexpected from women, but even the songs about boys playfully turned stereotypes on their heads. The women were the chasers, the ones in the driver's seat; once a boy was compared to a butterfly, another time a boy was the boy next door, and sometimes crushes were openly made fun of in the lyrics of Shonen Knife songs. Shonen Knife were one of the groups that inspired me to try to learn the electric guitar and write my own partially-English lyrics.

As I've said, I was mainly into the Japanese punk scene, especially the female punk scene.

I had a lot to look up to. Maybe because of the presence of female idol groups, ironically, female rock groups were very prevalent in Japan. Aphasia, for example, was dreamy and melodic with keyboard sequences. Scandal was excellent, Zone was famous for having members capable of doing almost every legal performance art imaginable (a requirement by the studio that auditioned for its members), and Stereopony was very pop indie. Other listens included Silent Siren, Shishamo, LAZYGunsBRISKY, New Strike Zipper, Nakanomori BAND, and tokyo pinsalocks.

I had issues with Band-Maid, mostly because they dressed as maids as part of their marketing sequence. Japan is infamous for being very "kawaii" everything, kawaii being taking anything and making it cute and cutesy. Men are pretty with makeup and long hair; women are the ultimate lesson in cute; everything is very cutesy, cosplay stylized no matter what genre you're looking at. This accounts for some more bizarre Japanese fashions on the streets and on the stage. I was okay with kawaii to a point, even with kawaii rock, but some of the more obviously cutesy, youthful sexual Lolita and kawaii rock costumes were a little much even for me. I saw that and I knew the society that was behind it, that society's unhealthy obsession with youth and beauty, and that combination sort of ruined it for me.

I've never been much of a cutesy person anyway. I am okay with a lot of Japanese street fashion, however, and I'll actually be talking about distinctly Japanese fashions - on the catwalk as well as the street - in a later essay. Most kawaii rock was okay; I only got wigged out when the kawaii ran into overload.

American and Japanese punk did have visible differences besides in aesthetic. Japanese lyrics were more in depth and covered a wider variety of subjects, and J-Rock wasn't always instantly recognizable by wailing electric guitar the way American Rock was. J-Rock often had more standard, recognizable across all categories pop-like distinctions in a way American Rock did not.

Japanese punk was also more about the genre and the style - it was somewhat less about anger and political statements. I'd been to Japanese punk concerts; everyone was very polite and on time, people were smiling, no one ever threw anything. For Japanese punk rockers, the point is the music, the fashion, the basic message of rebellion, and enjoying themselves. On a more subconscious level, it may even be about rebelling against a highly homogenous society simply by being punk, one reason why me with my different biologically orange hair might have been attracted to punk from the beginning. I was already visually separated; might as well go all the way. Punk was one of the things - though certainly not the only thing - that inspired my darker, more grunge-like yet feminine fashion sense (though to be honest I have never been kawaii). Just to look different in Japan is rebelling, is almost a privilege.

The point of Japanese punk was not necessarily the politics or the anger (though other kinds of celebrity drama were still painfully common). In fact, it was somewhat more unusual for Japanese celebrities to be highly political. Many of them were under the rather strict control of their labels and music producers, who didn't want them making waves and alienating people.

I'm not necessarily saying there's anything wrong with any of this. In some ways, a lot of it is actually positive. I'm just telling you - that's the musical culture I come from. In Japan, just to be punk itself is a form of rebellion - a way of taking back the power. Further political anger is somewhat unnecessary. Furthermore, in a collectivistic culture like Japan, it would even be somewhat unusual - for better or for worse, people try harder to get along.


	4. The Choice is Yours

"The Choice is Yours"

 _Iitoko-dori_ is the term for the Japanese talent for adopting elements of foreign culture.

It sounds like a small thing, but it accounts for a lot of Japan. It's why the Japanese were so good at modernizing in the Meiji era, then again after World War II. It's why modern Japanese people live under capitalism, wear blue jeans, lead many aspects of Westernizing Asian culture, and enjoy relative wealth and success in the modern era.

The Japanese have been using the process of _Iitoko-dori_ for centuries, stemming all the way back when they incorporated various religious and cultural elements of imperial China into their system and way of living in order to come out on top. The Japanese have never really stopped this process of constant foreign adoption and incorporation since.

I say this because I have an admittance. No matter how original Japanese I try to be, there is almost always at least one element of a foreign culture that fascinates each Japanese person. It's built into our DNA. We're open to new cultural concepts.

For me, that thing is Shakespeare - and on a larger level, Western poetry.

Western poetry is almost entirely different from native Japanese _haiku_ poetry. I write both kinds of poetry, so I can tell you the differences easily. _Haiku_ is rule heavy - even if the poet chooses to break the rules, they still have to acknowledge those rules exist. Whether it's the strict syllabic and line structure or the mandatory incorporation of some element of the seasons or nature, Japanese poets either know the rules and follow them, or know the rules and break them.

More than that, though, is what's at the heart of _haiku_.

If you're reading a Japanese poem and you're not reading between the lines, you are missing an element that is particularly vital to Japanese poetry. In Japan, what is not said is always at least as important as what is said. Japanese poems seem very small, but a lot of thought goes into making them. Layers of meaning through literal but subtle images are layered into each tiny poem. _Haiku_ is meant to make you think - much thought with few words, that is the point of the Japanese _haiku_ poem. Often, there is a very traditionally Japanese focus on the aesthetics of simplicity and bittersweetness.

I do write that kind of poetry. I am a poet. On a larger level, I am a writer, as you can tell through these essays. I started reading when I was very young (I own countless careworn huge tomes to this day), and I was always particularly drawn to poetry. I'd already begun trying to write it when I began taking after-school writing classes in junior high. From there, my interest in writing branched off into other areas as well, mainly personal essays such as these and short fiction pieces.

I never stopped writing after taking those classes, and that's how you have what this is today.

But I do write Western poetry as well as Japanese poetry - and yes, I do love Shakespeare. On a broader level, I love many Western poets, the top of my female list including Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson. In both cases, I am interested more in their unusual choice in subject matter than I am in how romantic and idealistic they are or are not, but with Shakespeare I am a hopeless romantic.

I am. I've sighed dreamily over all his most famous romances, no matter how flawed the characters in them are, and pored over entire volumes of his lesser-known poetic works. I admire Shakespeare - to consistently come out with such a sheer volume of entirely innovative work, have none of it be cliche, have none of it fall below standard… that is incredible to me as a writer. And not only am I a poet, I play the guitar and I am also a songwriter. My poetic style, in fact, often informs my songs, and my lyrical bent informs my poetry. They feed off of each other. I'm full of traipsing rhythm and unusual concrete wording.

So for me, Shakespeare's volume of original, innovative work is truly incredible.

How does Western poetry differ from Japanese poetry? There are some similarities. Both require making abstract points through concrete details; both require gaining larger meaning from smaller word puzzles. That's one of the things that so attracts me to poetry. Both genres also require an avoiding of cliche, which has led to the modern rule "try not to write love or angst poetry unless you have something really unusual to say," a rule I attempt to follow, sticking to complex stories and social commentary instead. But Western poetry has multiple stanzas, and Western poems are often long, traipsing talks through the poet's mind. There is greater word volume, but the deeper meaning still has to be there.

As far as I can tell, there are not as many rules to Western poetry. No syllabic or line limitations except in specialized instances. Like Japanese poetry, modern Western poetry does not have to rhyme.

But this actually sometimes makes Western poetry harder. You can do _anything_. So either you can write Japanese poetry and be restricted by countless rules, or you can write Western poetry and rely solely on your own wit to come out with something truly interesting, imaginative, and original. Either you can say much with very few words, or you can use lots of words and try not to let your meaning get lost in the rambling.

The choice is yours.


	5. Quiet, Rigid, Gratuitous

"Quiet Emotions, Rigid Styles, Gratuitous Sex"

There are differences between Japanese and Hollywood movies. I would know, because Hollywood movies appear all over the globe and so it is easy for me to compare the two.

In Japanese movies, pacing is slower than what Westerners are used to. The _mise en scene_ (focus on vivid scenery and props as method for telling a good story) is very strong and the techniques for filming are a bit more rigid stylistically. Signs of affection are smaller, quieter, and more meaningful, and there is a lot less open kissing and sex, though one could certainly think of exceptions. This doesn't mean the Japanese are always prudes, however, because their action sequences also tend to be more graphic and painful - when they arise. I would say there are more quietly emotional Japanese movies than there are Hollywood movies. Many more somber emotional Japanese movies are, like the people at themselves, better at expressing themselves sometimes without saying a word.

I also feel the need to speak to the very Japanese idea that there is no purely good or purely evil human being - and it's the same way with Japanese fictional characters. I will get to a whole essay about this, but it is worth bearing in mind for Japanese movies as well. There is no character in most Japanese fiction who always does the right thing, or furthermore who only does the wrong thing for no apparent human reason. That kind of trope does exist in Hollywood, but not in other kinds of foreign film - French film being another good example of a culture in which no set of characters is black and white, though I would say French film carries not as much quiet emotion and rigid filming styles and more of a sense of uncertain, disenchanted ambivalence combined with experimental filming styles.

Even the way the Japanese enjoy movies tends to be different. I have heard stories of American cinema audiences laughing and applauding at appropriate moments during a screening. I have been to the cinema countless times and such a thing would never happen in a still and silent Japanese theater, where the point is to keep quiet so everyone can enjoy. The cinema is not a public forum the way it sometimes seems to be in America.

But in particular, I'm fascinated by the differences between Japanese and Hollywood horror and cult movies, because those are my specialty. I'm one of those odd people who enjoys obscure and experimental movies (cult) and movies specifically created to scare me (horror).

I would say in Japanese horror there tends to be more of a focus on the supernatural. Demonic, malicious ghosts and ghouls are very common in Japanese horror stories, which might spring from Shinto, the native Japanese religion, and its focus on spirits and demons of the forests, mountains, and rivers around Japan. There is also more of a psychological element to Japanese horror. It works on the premise that what you don't see is scarier than what you do, that quiet can be scarier than loud. This is opposed to many Hollywood horror movies, which I have sampled and which seem to be blatantly loud, violent, graphic, bloody, and focused on psychopathic individuals.

I prefer Japanese horror. Yes, even the post-nuclear campy monster horror such as _Godzilla,_ though contrary to any foreign stereotypes that's hardly my main interest. The old, campy stuff is more something to snack and have fun with on a Friday night, possibly with friends.

Cult film is meant to push the limits of what film can be in its native country, so much Japanese cult film is graphically and sometimes disgustingly sexual. I don't always go for that, so I have to pick and choose rather carefully what cult films I watch and what cult films I stay the hell away from. I most love the cult films that focus on other elements and interests. I particularly enjoy the more art house film stuff that discusses political elements through unusual avenues. The gratuitous sex can get old.

 _Blind Woman's Curse_ is good with a surprising horror and supernatural element. _Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter_ is not actually as sexual as it sounds, focusing mostly on themes of gang activity, gender, and racism. _Ecstasy of the Angels_ also focuses on gang activity. These are just some examples.

 _Ringu_ is probably one of the most famous Japanese horror films of all time. _Suicide Circle_ is not for the faint of heart or the easily triggered, for obvious reasons that exist right in the title, and is not actually mainly supernatural or gang-related but rather puts a horror element on a serious problem in Japanese society. Again, just some examples.

So as you can see, not only do I like quiet and supernatural horror, not only do I like unusual and not sex-driven cult, I also like movies from more obscure cinematic cultures and movies that say something deeper about the society I live in. On a more general level, though, I just love movies. Going to the theater is one of my absolute favorite things to do, and I follow Japanese film particularly avidly.


	6. Japanese Fashion Obsessions

"Japanese Fashion Obsessions"

Most Japanese modern fashion is simply following the trends of Western fashion. But there is uniquely Japanese fashion, Western fashion with a Japanese twist, both in the catwalk and on the street. This essay focuses on that, and also on what I look like personally.

Kawakubo Rei is probably one of the most famous Japanese catwalk designers of all time. She used traditional Japanese fashion elements in a Western setting in order to create something truly original. She used the Japanese concepts of _wabi-sabi_ and _ma_. _Wabi-sabi_ is the idea that something plain and worn can be beautiful, and is a very Buddhist concept. _Ma_ is the idea of space between the clothing and the person's body, or on a larger level just as the idea of space, such as in a kimono on a physical level or it can even refer to the space and meaning between the lines of a _haiku_ poem on a more metaphorical level.

So Kawakubo created clothing mostly in black and white colors, with unusual amounts of space between the clothing and the person's body, sometimes in unusual places. She also purposefully ripped and tore her clothes to create a worn look, which no one had ever done before. Her clothing, like kimono itself, was unusually gender-neutral. Her clothing line was the French term _Comme de Garcons,_ which refers to boys even as she used female models for boyish clothes (though she insists this is just a coincidence).

In other words, if you like punk and grunge fashion, you can thank the Japanese. Because when Kawakubo and several of her peers came out, they were almost scandalous. Everything else was colorful, gendered, and form-fitting; _no one else_ was doing what they did.

My own fashion style proudly follows this trend. I am tall, thin, and willowy. My face is heart-shaped with high cheekbones. I have golden skin and crescent moon amber brown eyes. My hair is long, softly wavy, and orange. Now, how do I style all this?

I use traditional Japanese elements for my hair. I lift it all up with yellow gold pins in a pile above my head, in more modern fashion higher than a traditional Japanese bun, but in true grunge fashion, it is purposefully messy and long pieces of wavy, wild, tiger orange hair fly down to hang around my face. The hairstyle is good with bold, flame red layers of lipstick, which I always have with me.

My clothes are baggy, tattered black and white layers of sweaters and above the knee skirts. It is sort of grunge, in its own feminine way, and it liberally uses the concepts of wabi and ma.

But that is not where traditional Japanese fashion ends. There are also Tokyo street fashions, and even though I don't use them myself, it's important to acknowledge them.

Much Tokyo street fashion focuses on bright colors and almost cosplay-like cutesy extravagance. It takes the Japanese modern obsession with cute youth and colorful animation to its highest possible level. Harajuku is a whole Tokyo district specifically full of people who dress like this, just for fun. I do get some trouble for my alternative hair and fashion sense, but if I hadn't lived in Tokyo I think it would have been a lot worse.

One of the most notable Tokyo street trends is the Lolita trend. Lolita seems to have influenced almost every other kind of Japanese street fashion. Lolita girls dress up in cutesy little girl outfits - maid outfits or Goth Lolita outfits on the extreme end, Western nature themes on the softer end - and paint up their faces and in general try to act as girly and high pitched in voice as possible. As I've said, Japan is _obsessed_ with youth. I do not share this obsession, mostly on purpose, but I don't have a problem with most of Tokyo street fashion.

It's part of my culture. Think of it from an American perspective. Just because I don't dress Goth or even agree with its mindset, that's not a particularly good reason to hate Goths.


	7. Building Blocks of Japanese Palette

"The Building Blocks of the Japanese Palette"

Green tea - which I drink multiple times a day, including in the mornings - and tea ceremony will get its own essay. But here are some essential elements of Japanese cuisine. I am a good cook, I've been cooking for my family since my mother died when I was nine, so I know my stuff.

I have a particular interest in experimental recipe making. I love throwing a bunch of the following elements together and making a brand-new meal out of them.

Soy, fish (everything from what a Westerner would think of to octopus and squid and fish eggs), and rice are considered the building blocks of Japanese cuisine. Various kinds of noodles are also essential, from cold soba to hot ramen, and dumplings are another popular favorite. Miso and wasabi are popular garnishes for taste. Tofu and mountain vegetables are also very common, as are a few other kinds of meat besides fish - pork, for example. Eggs are a surprising addition to Japanese cuisine that most people wouldn't think of.

Mostly, the modern Japanese specialize in bowls full of lots of things put together - noodle dishes full of meats and vegetables, stews like curry, and many of these bowls are coated with a bottom layer of rice. Japanese fancy dinners can be all held in separate bowls, but there is literally a whole classification of modern Japanese meals that means "throw it all together."

I do that a lot, because it's an easy family dinner. Cook a bunch of things, throw them all together into four bowls, and serve. It's inexpensive, it's fast, and it works.

I especially love spicy food, so I know countless Japanese spicy food dishes. _Karashi mentaiko_ , sweet and spicy fish eggs, is my favorite. But I also really like _ebi shrimp_ , shrimp in a sweet and spicy chili sauce, and _mabo dofu_ , which is made with tofu, sweet bean paste, and chili oil. As you can probably tell, I like a sweet tinge to my spice. Spicy Korean takeout is my absolute favorite kind of takeout, and I love to try new Korean recipes.

I also have a huge weakness for chocolate. _Dorayaki,_ a kind of filled pancake, is delicious with chocolate filling. _Taiyaki_ , a little more like a waffle but the same general idea, is also good with chocolate filling. _Sakura Jelly_ is good if you're really feeling adventurous - it's pickled sakura flower added to a clear jelly and poured with white chocolate. It sounds weird, but it looks amazing and it is delicious. I always have it during spring in cherry blossom (sakura) viewing season.

Chocolate also influences my choice in snacks, however. I love chocolate pocky and chocolate _mochi_ \- a kind of sweet, glutinous rice cake. Those are probably the two snacks I carry with me in my bag near my flame red lipstick, cutesy cat pendants and keychains, and cutesy cat wallet the most often. As I've said, I refuse firmly to care about weight and dieting like a proper Japanese girl should, so I take chocolate snacks around everywhere with me in my purse and quite frankly, I Don't Give A Shit.

Also in my bag usually are scattered hoards of little mints. I chew on them absently to keep myself occupied during the day. I don't really chew in an attitudinal way; my usual demeanor is more neutral, quiet, and reserved.

Next up, we have a whole section on green tea and tea ceremony - mainly because that single drink is so sacred in Japanese culture that it deserves one. Sadly, these days I'm more likely to know about the ceremonies surrounding it than a man, and that I will also explain.


	8. Respect and Knowledge

"Respect and Knowledge"

Tea ceremony finds its roots in Zen Buddhism. It is a mostly silent process of cleansing oneself and serving powdered green tea to the smell of incense in a meditative environment, usually in a pre-arranged teahouse that has an attached Zen garden with specialized, expensive yet humble tools. Dress code is strictly formal, if not outright kimono, guests can only come in a certain maximum number, food and sake wine are served, and this is one of the geisha arts.

Sadly, today it is also considered a feminine art. This is sad, because originally some of the greatest tea ceremony masters were men and male Buddhist priests. The same goes for most other so-called "feminine" arts - until recently, they were not feminine at all, and one way to tell how "modernized" a fictitious Japanese world actually is can be judged by whether or not the ancient arts such as flower arrangement are mainly seen as feminine. If they are, the world is modernized - I don't care how feudal it pretends to be. The traditional arts were not originally so strictly gendered. Even today, some of the greatest traditional arts masters are men, although this is becoming less common. Calligraphy, flower arrangement, tea ceremony, traditional music - people are starting to see them as more feminine.

Tea ceremony is an all-day event that is supposed to be relaxing and serene. When done right, it is a peaceful process full of meaning but silence and an almost meditative serenity. It is not, however, strictly somber. It should be humble, but there can be plenty of smiling in a tea ceremony.

There are specific tea ceremonies, and there almost seem to be different rules of any kind of occasion: seeing a friend off on a long journey, evening, cherry blossom viewing spring, and riverside summer are all vastly different kinds of ceremonies, for example.

The ceremony, as can be assumed, centers around the tea. Tea and particularly green tea holds a greatly sacred place in traditional Japanese culture. It is made and served reverentially, with great care, in an almost holy silence. Two kinds of tea are served in each tea ceremony, and there are prescribed rituals centered around each serving which must strictly be followed. The trick for a host is that they also have to seem calm and relaxed while they serve the tea.

I took tea ceremony classes in junior high out of mostly feminine interest. I gained more knowledge than I ever expected to and formed a true respect and appreciation for green tea and the rituals surrounding it, to the point where it became my favorite sort of thing to ask for in coffee shops and a regular part of both my morning and my afternoon relaxing routines. I drink it every day, to this day.


	9. Good and Evil

"Good and Evil"

One of the most vital things in understanding manga (Japanese comics) or even Japanese fiction and Japanese culture in general is to understand one basic concept: nobody is just black or just white, just good or just evil.

Characters in manga - a form of reading I love - are never simple. That's one of the things I like about it. If they're evil, there's always a very human reason why and they always have moments of surprising humanity. And their evil is often complex. If they're good, they're never perfect. They have flaws and selfish moments and they're not always prepared for what's in front of them.

This is vital in understanding me. I'm not perfect - far from it. I can be selfish; I can be sarcastic and callous; I can be too fiery; I can be too opinionated or teasing. I'm not a villain, but I'm not always a hero either.

Nobody is.

Equally important, however, are two ideas. First, the concept of improvement through intellect, willpower, and determination. Intellect is important to Japanese culture, and that can be seen in everything we artistically produce. Our fight scenes are strategic, for example. And geniuses are highly valued.

But only one thing is more highly valued, and that is willpower - the ability to keep going whatever the cost.

That's concept one. But concept two is just important: the highly Buddhist idea that redemption is possible. Genuine repentance can bring about true redemption in any given person, no matter how evil they have been.

All these concepts can be seen liberally in Japanese fiction, and in particular in Japanese manga.


	10. The City of the Future

"The City of the Future"

I grew up in late twentieth and early twenty-first century Tokyo.

First, it's crowded. Houses are compact with lots of hidden shelving space. Everyone is built on top of one another.

Second, it touts itself as the city of the future. Its transit and train system is fast and deadly advanced. It has tall sheets of metal buildings and even the smallest shops have neon signs. Cars crowd past in the streets. Honking, zooming, shouting, the smells of smoke and gasoline.

Third, the color. The sheer scope of the people you can find in Tokyo is enormous. People of all types and all colors, in garment ranging from uber traditional to super out there and strange, is available on every street corner. Tokyo has the most bizarre novelties, among them themed cafes and cat cafes. The most famous red light district is also in Tokyo. The arcades and pachinko parlors are endless.

I am a city girl. I am independent and comfortable traveling anywhere, I know which places to avoid at which times, and not much fazes me. I carry pepper spray in my bag and keep on high guard on trains, subways, buses, and trolleys going up and down streets.

I love experiencing all that Tokyo has to offer, especially with big groups of high school friends.

I also have an ingrained modern-city-girl skepticism. I hate dramatic reality TV, I hate feminine TV and magazines, and I despise Japan's highly prevalent amount of psychics. Yes, I've already said that I believe I can see ghosts.

But I don't see myself as a psychic. I don't try to make money off of, make predictions from, or control the dead people that I see. That's what's most despicable about psychics for me. It doesn't have anything to do with whether or not they believe in something. I believe in Buddhism just as much as in ghosts myself. In Japan, there is not as much friction between "religious" and "nonreligious" as there is in the West anyway.

But I am a city girl at heart, always and forever, and I look at everything with a keen, critical, and skeptical eye. If something works, I always want to know why. I never take anything at face value. In this way, I am hopeless.


	11. By Healing and By Fighting

"By Healing and By Fighting"

I have a saving people thing.

It comes from a lot of different places, and some of those will only be covered in section two. But I do. And I think first and foremost it comes from growing up as a big sister.

I am a huge protector of my little sisters - but I do it the right way. I teach them self defense and a fighting spirit instead of fighting their battles for them. I teach them about puberty and guys instead of trying to shield them from those truths. I always try to set a good example, one they can look up to - if they choose to.

But in the end, I'm a protector. I'm there to defend my little sisters, and I do defend them - fiercely. Their birth was my biggest impetus for starting karate classes. I remember looking down at them newborn, so delicate and tiny and perfect, and a fierce desire to defend filling me.

So I started learning how to fight. I refused to sit on the sidelines and not get involved in battles. I've always been that way. On instinct, I want to be on the front lines when there's protecting and saving to be done.

It is the one area in which I am completely, utterly, and hopelessly fiery and reckless.

Eventually, of course, I also became a mother figure when our own mother died, and a nurse for my father's hospital. And I started being an animal rescuer in the form of stray and shelter cats, gaining a love for cutesy cat paraphernalia. I became known as the "big sister" among my female friends, and this fit me - nurturing but also tough and protecting.

I was a nurturer, but I was also the co-head of karate club at my high school, alongside my also-female best friend.

So not only was I a nurturer, I was a fighter. I was complicated, hard to define. I still am.

Because in Japan, the sister and mother figure, the nurse, is gentle and kind. And I can be that. Then I can turn around and be wild and fiery and fierce. It all depends on the situation.

I refuse definitions. It's one of the things I'm proud of. I protect in both ways - by healing and by fighting.


	12. The Stereotype, End of Part 1, Section 1

"The Stereotype"

I was always, I think, aware of the stereotype - that women couldn't do math and science.

I was aware of it because I didn't follow it. I got good grades in all my subjects. But there was a rarity of girls especially in the field of computer science and engineering.

So after my mother died and I began reading feminist literature, I specifically set myself to becoming a whiz at math and an expert at figuring out computers, their hardware and software. I took computers apart and put them back together, figured out complex algorithms, figured out how to do and fix obscure things on the computer involving software. I wanted to prove people wrong. I wanted to do that thing everyone told me a woman couldn't do.

It even became my career aspiration.

In junior high, I remember very distinctly the moment it became my career aspiration. Some asshole guy in science class told me, "Girls aren't computer geeks."

I decided in that very moment that I would be a computer geek. Fuck it. That was what I was going to do for the rest of my life. Prove that guy wrong. Fuck him.

There is a large perception of "feminine jobs" and even "feminine schools" in Japan. I intend to buck that trend. I'm going to a major university, motherfuckers, and I'm going to get into computer engineering.

* * *

This marks the end of section one, in which you get to know me personally. Next we get into section two - a chronological series of essays about the events that actually happened to me in my younger life up until now at fifteen.

This is where it gets really interesting. This is where the essays get personal. This is where it begins to read like a book.

* * *

Author's Note: I had a quiet, snowy, relaxed day indoors and I just decided to finish up section one. Next we get into more traditional book-like formats. That will be the sequel to this book, which should be up shortly.


End file.
